'Presoak etxera, bai', (Prisoners on the street, yes) are sung in their latest children's video by the Basque clowns Pirritx, Porrots and Marimotots. Comedians hired by dozens of Basque and Navarrese city councils have joined Sare's campaign to speed up the release of the 130 ETA prisoners who are incarcerated in Spanish and French prisons. The video has been publicly denounced by victims' associations such as the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) and the Fernando Buesa Foundation.

Pirritx, Porrots and Marimotots are the Basque clowns best known to Basque children and throughout their 35 years of history they have participated as a group in initiatives in favour of prisoners. In addition, Joxe Mari Agirretxe Porrotx and Aiora Zulaika were councillors on lists of the Abertzale left in Lasarte (Guipúzcoa).

The three Basque clowns have joined the 'Giltzak' (Keys) campaign with a music video in which they sing a song together with a group of adults and children to get the "Basque prisoners" to take to the streets. "The key is in the street, we are in the street waiting," they repeat in this video posted on the website of Sare, the organization led by the former Basque Minister of Justice Joseba Azkarraga.

With this initiative, the three Basque clowns support the events organised to encourage Basque citizens to participate in the annual demonstration for ETA members that will be held in Bilbao in 2024 on 13 January. Currently, there are 120 ETA prisoners incarcerated in prisons in the Basque Country and Navarre and a dozen in France. Sare does not directly call for the release of ETA members but rather "to open the doors to all the modalities of serving the sentences that the law itself offers, deepening a new prison model that is more humanized and therefore fairer, recognizing the rights of Basque prisoners and also of all the people who have suffered in this country. and in this way respecting their pain."

Throughout the year, the three Basque clowns maintain an intense presence in the festivals of the towns and cities of the Basque Country. Municipalities governed by EH Bildu but also by the PNV and the PSE-EE (such as Ermua) hire Pirritx, Porrots and Marimotots for their children's shows. This group of clowns has spoken out in the past in favour of measures for Basque prisoners, such as when in 2009 they made another video to demand the rapprochement of ETA members. So far, the trio has never publicly taken a stand in favour of the victims of ETA terrorism nor has it produced children's videos about them.

  • ETA
  • Add
  • Bilbao
  • Bildu
  • PNV
  • France
  • Navarre
  • Parot Doctrine
  • Terrorism